Update: I was unfortunately not aware of Shamus Young's severe criticism of Fallout 3 available here to link in the original piece and I regret that. It dovetails rather nicely with what I've written and it's much better executed than my piece. I strongly recommend anyone...

GAMING NEWS

[Update] 2K and Firaxis Games revealed Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth at PAX East through a 30-minute-long panel, which is now live on its official YouTube channel. The panel features Lead Designers Will Miller and David McDonough, Producer Lena Brenk, and Gameplay Systems Designer Anton Strenger.

[Original] 2K and Firaxis revealed the above teaser trailer for Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth during this PAX East weekend, revealing that humanity has ultimately ruined the environment on Earth and is now searching the stars (to hopefully not repeat the same mistakes) and colonizing alien planets for resources.

2K hasn't announced much beyond the game's release window of Fall 2014 and the platforms being PC, Mac, and Linux. We'll likely hear much more at E3, where we can grill the developers about mods, factions, and changes from Civilization V. (Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a tie-in with Evolve?)

Interestingly, Beyond Earth follows the hypothetical science win from Civilization V where a nation can win by researching every technology in the tree and gathering enough parts to build the rocket ship. That said, we'll likely not see the game be based around historical nations but around modern civilizations or perhaps future alliances that may not have any national affiliations whatsoever.

As the spare few screenshots below reveal, Beyond Earth's gameplay will still take place on a hexagonal grid and will require colonists to gather resources that seem to be trippy purple mushrooms and shiny golden elements. They will also need to tend with the terrain, including rivers, craters, and mountain ranges, as well as alien lifeforms like one razor-clawed tentacle worm... eck! Well, at least they're more exciting than raging barbarians...